WIDGETS and TWO Freebies! No wait Three!

Holiday!!! Celebrate!! Come and Celebrate .. it is my holiday.. Something like this, by one of Madonna's song in the 80s. But I am feeling it. You may also noticed that I have gone a little bonkers on WIDGETS. Yes, I have discovered them, well I didn't know the NeoCounter is a widget. I have added 7 more widgets to my blog. My favourites? The Blog pets! I have these pets before in real life and of course they out lived me. So it is really cool to have them virtually. Sometimes my brain still thinks I am in the 80s and finding cool things like the widgets with VIRTUAL pets just gives me the adrenaline to go on, and because of this I am almost finished with my NOV Oriental Challenge. Crazy eh?

Speaking of Widget, it is in the dictionary, cause when I typed it there's no red lines from Blogger. I believe 10 years ago, widget is not in our dictionary, just like WOK and TOFU. That is what I like about the English Language, it is ever growing, ever adopting, ever living and the list goes on you let me but I will stop here.

Speaking of.. again, yes, ever growing language reminds me Roald Dahl, he is one of my favourite writers. I learnt about him in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - the movie. I was fascinated by that all flavoured chewing gum, and that got me started on his books. He is ever making up new words... especially in BFG (BTW the reason he wrote BFG was because he loves Giant!) Words like SWISHFIGGLER, SNOZZCUMBER and one of my favourite WHIZPOPPING. Because of Dahl, I got interested in English - the language.

So, Widget is a new word for me. I heard of it when I saw them on my BF's MAC but I only thought it is for MAC and I have only the non MAC laptop.But thanks to Blogger I can play with widgets.

If you translate Chinese to English literary it sounds like new words too and sometimes it's quite funny. There were two moments in my teaching life that I have encountered that. Once a student wrote, "To cros strit you must be SMALL HEART, if not you will have accident." I called the student to my table (I was teaching in a Chinese Language school in Malaysia then)I asked, " what do you mean by SMALL HEART?"
He had a baffling look because he really believed it was English. He responded confidently, "It means careful, Ms ET! I can not believe you don't know this." It turned out that he translated careful to SMALL HEART from Chinese to English! He wanted to show off his vocabulary fluency.

In Chinese Careful means SMALL HEART when translated literary. Just like tofu which mean BEAN MUSH, I believe. I also had a student who wrote an apology letter and mentioned the word PRESSURE TEMPERATURE, literary translation from Chinese that means angry. Sometimes, I wondered wouldn't it be cool to adopt these words as well because they do make our reading more interesting.

Here are a few words of Chinese that are cool and I think the English language should adopt them in the dictionary like Widget, Wok and Tofu.
Computer - Electric Brain.
Restaurant - Rice Shop
Hotel - Big Alcohol Shop
Telephone - Electric Words
Hair Drying - Wind Cylinder
Bread - Flour Bun
and more.

Thus bring me to this weekend's freebie. I made up a new word from the doodles I have made the other day. Fleebitz! What does it mean? It means, little bits of flying thinglings doodled by ETScrap's designer LIZ!! Ha..what do you think of it? I think they will be a good strange thinglings for people who celebrates Halloween or just like to put something fun on their Layouts. The next one is just good old regular Doodle Brackets..there are 6 of them for you.



Grab FLEEBITZ here
(flowers not included, sorry)

Grab DOODLE BRACKET here






Back to my "From Germany with Love" freebie series, today will be Murals in a Germany. Yes, I paint murals in summer in Germany. Here is one of the pictures of the murals, and from the murals I have made stickers for you.

I had a lot of fun doing this mural and I did this wall and the sunflower table in 4 days. It was a spontaneous idea. I was asked what I like do to someday and I said, "You know I like Hayao Miyazaki and when I went to his museum in Tokyo, I love the idea that he painted faux windows etc. If I have a home of my own, I would dedicate one wall or two to my painting of faux something or a mural."


Next thing I know, I had brushes in my hand, 5 primary colour paint bottles and I was standing in front of a wall!! So, here is the first set of my mural stickers. Hope you like it.


Grab the MURAL STICKERS here

That's all for today. I never really wanted to blog when Blogger started and look what I am doing now but at least I feel that I am not talking about my boring life but about my passion in art and digital scrapbooking!

Well got to go, I need to pack for my holiday adventure! CROWDS of people in the train station here I come!! To infinity and beyond. (more like, let's hope I survive this train ride tomorrow.)

Have a great weekend.
Liz

"Courtesy of thanks is a virtue"

"A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men."
Roald Dahl